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A  DEFENCE  OF  COSMETICS 


«$■- 


BY    THE    SAME    AUTHOR 


MORE 

THE    HAPPY    HYPOCRITE 


A  Defence  of  Cosmetics 


BY 
MAX   BEERBOHM 


NEW  YORK 
DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY 

1922 


Copyright,  1896 
By  DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY 


PRINTED    IN    XJ.    B.    A. 


I 


A  DEFENCE  OF  COSMETICS 


«£- 


1606 


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DEFENCE       OF       COSMETICS 

jflAY,  but  it  is  useless  to  protest. 
Artifice  must  queen  it  once 
more  in  the  town,  and  so,  if 
there  be  any  whose  hearts 
chafe  at  her  return,  let  them 
not  say,  "We  have  come  into  evil  times,"  and 
be  all  for  resistance,  reformation,  or  angry 
cavilling.  For  did  the  king's  sceptre  send  the 
sea  retrograde,  or  the  wand  of  the  sorcerer 
avail  to  turn  the  sun  from  its  old  course? 
And  what  man  or  what  number  of  men  ever 
stayed  that  inexorable  process  by  which  the 
cities  of  this  world  grow,  are  very  strong,  fail, 
and  grow  again?  Indeed,  indeed,  there  is 
charm  in  every  period,  and  only  fools  and 
flutterpates  do  not  seek  reverently  for 
what  is  charming  in  their  own  day. 
No  martyrdom,  however  fine,  nor  satire, 
however  splendidly  bitter,  has  changed  by 
a  little  tittle  the  known  tendency  of  things. 
It  is  the  times  that  can  perfect  us,  not  we  the 
times,  and  so  let  all  of  us  wisely  acquiesce. 
Like  the  little  wired  marionettes,  let  us  ac- 
quiesce in  the  (lance. 


A       DEFENCE       OF       COSMETICS 

For  behold!  The  Victorian  era  comes  to 
its  end  and  the  day  of  sancta  simplicitas  is 
quite  ended.  The  old  signs  are  here  and  the 
portents  to  warn  the  seer  of  life  that  we  are 
ripe  for  a  new  epoch  of  artifice.  Are  not 
men  rattling  the  dice-box  and  ladies  dipping 
their  fingers  in  the  rouge-pot?  At  Rome,  in 
the  keenest  time  of  her  degringolade,  when 
there  was  gambling  even  in  the  holy  temples, 
great  ladies  (does  not  Lucian  tell  us?)  did 
not  scruple  to  squander  all  they  had  upon  un- 
guents from  Arabia.  Nero's  mistress  and  un- 
happy wife,  Poppaea,  of  shameful  memory, 
had  in  her  travelling  retinue  fifteen — or,  as 
some  say,  fifty — she-asses,  for  the  sake  of 
their  milk,  that  was  thought  an  incomparable 
guard  against  cosmetics  with  poison  in  them. 
Last  century,  too,  when  life  was  lived  by 
candle-light,  and  ethics  was  but  etiquette,  and 
even  art  a  question  of  punctilio,  women,  we 
know,  gave  the  best  hours  of  the  day  to  the 
crafty  farding  of  their  faces  and  the  tower- 
ing of  their  coiffures.  And  men,  throwing 
passion  into  the  wine-bOwl  to  sink  or  swim, 
turned  out  thought  to  browse  upon  the  green 
cloth.  Cannot  we  even  now  in  our  fancy 
<2> 


A       DEFENCE       OF       COSMETICS 

see  them,  those  silent  exquisites  round  the 
long  table  at  Brook's,  masked,  all  of  them, 
"lest  the  countenance  should  betray  feeling," 
in  quinze  masks,  through  whose  eyelets  they 
sat  peeping,  peeping,  while  macao  brought 
them  riches  or  ruin!  We  can  see  them,  those 
silent  rascals,  sitting  there  with  their  cards 
and  their  rouleaux  and  their  wooden  money- 
bowls,  long  after  the  dawn  had  crept  up  St. 
James's  and  pressed  its  haggard  face  against 
the  window  of  the  little  club.  Yes,  we  can 
raise  their  ghosts — and,  more,  we  can  see 
manywhere  a  devotion  to  hazard  fully  as 
meek  as  theirs.  In  England  there  has  been 
a  wonderful  revival  of  cards.  Baccarat  may 
rival  dead  faro  in  the  tale  of  her  devotees. 
We  have  all  seen  the  sweet  English  chatelaine 
at  her  roulette  wheel,  and  ere  long  it  may 
be  that  tender  parents  will  be  writing  to  com- 
plain of  the  compulsory  baccarat  in  our  public 
schools. 

In  fact,  we  are  all  gamblers  once  more, 
but  our  gambling  is  on  a  finer  scale  than  ever 
it  was.  We  fly  from  the  card-room  to  the 
heath,  and  from  the  heath  to  the  City,  and 
from  the  City  to  the  coast  of  the  Mediter- 
rC3;h 


A        DEFENCE        OF        COSMETICS 

ranean.  And  just  as  no  one  seriously  en- 
courages the  clergy  in  its  frantic  efforts  to 
lay  the  spirit  of  chance  that  has  thus  resurged 
among  us,  so  no  longer  are  many  faces  set 
against  that  other  great  sign  of  a  more  com- 
plicated life,  the  love  for  cosmetics.  No 
longer  is  a  lady  of  fashion  blamed  if,  to 
escape  the  outrageous  persecution  of  time, 
she  fly  for  sanctuary  to  the  toilet-table;  and 
if  a  damosel,  prying  in  her  mirror,  be  sure 
that  with  brush  and  pigment  she  can  trick 
herself  into  more  charm,  we  are  not  angry. 
Indeed,  why  should  we  ever  have  been? 
Surely  it  is  laudable,  this  wish  to  make  fair 
the  ugly  and  overtop  fairness,  and  no  wonder 
that  within  the  last  five  years  the  trade  of  the 
makers  of  cosmetics  has  increased  im- 
moderately— twenty-fold,  so  one  of  these 
makers  has  said  to  me.  We  need  but  walk 
down  any  modish  street  and  peer  into  the  little 
broughams  that  flit  past,  or  (in  Thackeray's 
phrase)  under  the  bonnet  of  any  woman  we 
meet,  to  see  over  how  wide  a  kingdom  rouge 
reigns. 

And  now  that  the  use  of  pigments  is  be- 
coming general,  and  most  women  are  not  so 


A       DEFENCE       OF       COSMETICS 

young  as  they  are  painted,  it  may  be  asked 
curiously  how  the  prejudice  ever  came  into 
being.  Indeed,  it  is  hard  to  trace  folly,  for 
that  it  is  inconsequent,  to  its  start;  and  per- 
haps it  savours  too  much  of  reason  to  sug- 
gest that  the  prejudice  was  due  to  the  tristful 
confusion  man  has  made  of  soul  and  surface. 
Through  trusting  so  keenly  to  the  detection 
of  the  one  by  keeping  watch  upon  the  other, 
and  by  force  of  the  thousand  errors  follow- 
ing, he  has  come  to  think  of  surface  even  as 
the  reverse  of  soul.  He  seems  to  suppose 
that  every  clown  beneath  his  paint  and  lip- 
salve is  moribund  and  knows  it  (though  in 
verity,  I  am  told,  clowns  are  as  cheerful  a 
class  of  men  as  any  other),  that  the  fairer 
the  fruit's  rind  and  the  more  delectable  its 
bloom,  the  closer  are  packed  the  ashes  within 
it.  The  very  jargon  of  the  hunting-field 
connects  cunning  with  a  mask.  And  so  per- 
haps came  man's  anger  at  the  embellishment 
of  women — that  lovely  mask  of  enamel  with 
its  shadows  of  pink  and  tiny  pencilled  veins, 
what  must  lurk  behind  it?  Of  what  treach- 
erous mysteries  may  it  not  be  the  screen? 
Does  not  the  heathen  lacquer  her  dark  face, 
<5> 


A       DEFENCE       OF       COSMETICS 

and  the  harlot  paint  her  cheeks,  because 
sorrow  has  made  them  pale? 

After  all,  the  old  prejudice  is  a-dying. 
We  need  not  pry  into  the  secret  of  its  birth. 
Rather  is  this  a  time  of  jolliness  and  glad 
indulgence.  For  the  era  of  rouge  is  upon 
us,  and  as  only  in  an  elaborate  era  can  man, 
by  the  tangled  accrescency  of  his  own 
pleasures  and  emotions,  reach  that  refinement 
which  is  his  highest  excellence,  and  by  mak- 
ing himself,  so  to  say,  independent  of  Nature, 
come  nearest  to  God,  so  only  in  an  elaborate 
era  is  woman  perfect.  Artifice  is  the  strength 
of  the  world,  and  in  that  same  mask  of  paint 
and  powder,  shadowed  with  vermeil  tinct  and 
most  trimly  pencilled,  is  woman's  strength. 

For  see!  We  need  not  look  so  far  back 
to  see  woman  under  the  direct  influence  of 
Nature.  Early  in  this  century,  our  grand- 
mothers, sickening  of  the  odour  of  faded 
exotics  and  spilt  wine,  came  out  into  the  day- 
light once  more  and  let  the  breezes  blow 
around  their  faces  and  enter,  sharp  and  wel- 
come, into  their  lungs.  Artifice  they  drove 
forth  and  they  set  Martin  Tupper  upon  a 
throne  of  mahogany  to  rule  over  them.  A 
<6> 


A       DEFENCE       OF       COSMETICS 

very  reign  of  terror  set  in.  All  things  were 
sacrificed  to  the  fetish  Nature.  Old  ladies 
may  still  be  heard  to  tell  how,  when  they 
were  girls,  affectation  was  not;  and,  if  we 
verify  their  assertion  in  the  light  of  such 
literary  authorities  as  Dickens,  we  find  that 
it  is  absolutely  true.  Women  appear  to  have 
been  in  those  days  utterly  natural  in  their 
conduct — flighty,  fainting,  blushing,  gush- 
ing, giggling,  and  shaking  their  curls.  They 
knew  no  reserve  in  the  first  days  of  the 
Victorian  era.  No  thought  was  held  too 
trivial,  no  emotion  too  silly,  to  express.  To 
Nature  everything  was  sacrificed.  Great 
heavens!  And  in  those  barren  days  what  in- 
fluence did  women  exert!  By  men  they  seem 
not  to  have  been  feared  nor  loved,  but  re- 
garded rather  as  "dear  little  creatures"  or 
"wonderful  little  beings,"  and  in  their  rela- 
tion to  life  as  foolish  and  ineffectual  as  the 
landscapes  they  did  in  water-colours.  Yet, 
if  the  women  of  those  years  were  of  no  great 
account,  they  had  a  certain  charm,  and  they 
at  least  had  not  begun  to  trepass  upon  men's 
ground ;  if  they  touched  not  thought,  which  is 
theirs  by  right,  at  any  rate  they  refrained 
<1> 


A       DEFENCE       OF       COSMETICS 

from  action,  which  is  ours.  Far  more  serious 
was  it  when,  in  the  natural  trend  of  time,  they 
became  enamoured  of  rinking  and  archery  and 
galloping  along  the  Brighton  Parade.  Swiftly 
they  have  sped  on  since  then  from  horror 
to  horror.  The  invasion  of  the  tennis-courts 
and  of  the  golf-links,  the  seizure  of  the  bicycle 
and  of  the  typewriter,  were  but  steps  pre- 
liminary in  that  campaign  which  is  to  end 
with  the  final  victorious  occupation  of  St. 
Stephen's.  But  stay!  The  horrific  pioneers 
of  womanhood  who  gad  hither  and  thither 
and,  confounding  wisdom  with  the  device  on 
her  shield,  shriek  for  the  unbecoming,  are 
doomed.  Though  they  spin  their  bicycle- 
treadles  so  amazingly  fast,  they  are  too  late. 
Though  they  scream  victory,  none  follow  them. 
Artifice,  that  fair  exile,  has  returned. 

Yes,  though  the  pioneers  know  it  not,  they 
are  doomed  already.  For  of  the  curiosities 
of  history  not  the  least  strange  is  the  manner 
in  which  two  social  movements  may  be  seen 
to  overlap,  long  after  the  second  has,  in  truth, 
given  its  death-blow  to  the  first.  And,  in 
like  manner,  as  one  has  seen  the  limbs  of  a 
murdered  thing  in  lively  movement,   so  we 


A       DEFENCE       OF       COSMETICS 

need  not  doubt  that,  though  the  voice  of  those 
who  cry  out  for  reform  be  very  terribly  shrill, 
they  will  soon  be  hushed.  Dear  Artifice  is 
with  us.  It  needed  but  that  we  should  wait. 
Surely,  without  any  of  my  pleading, 
women  will  welcome  their  great  and  amiable 
protectrix,  as  by  instinct.  For  (have  I  not 
said?)  it  is  upon  her  that  all  their  strength, 
their  life  almost,  depends.  Artifice's  first 
command  to  them  is  that  they  should  repose. 
With  bodily  activity  their  powder  will 
fly,  their  enamel  crack.  They  are  butter- 
flies who  must  not  flit,  if  they  love 
their  bloom.  Now,  setting  aside  the  point 
of  view  of  passion,  from  which  very 
many  obvious  things  might  be  said  (and 
probably  have  been  by  the  minor  poets),  it 
is,  from  the  intellectual  point  of  view,  quite 
necessary  that  a  woman  should  repose.  Hers 
is  the  resupinate  sex.  On  her  couch  she  is 
a  goddess,  but  so  soon  as  ever  she  put  her 
foot  to  the  ground — lo,  she  is  the  veriest  little 
sillypop,  and  quite  done  for.  She  cannot 
rival  us  in  action,  but  she  is  our  mistress  in 
the  things  of  the  mind.  Let  her  not  by 
second-rate  athletics,  nor  indeed  by  any 
-C9> 


A       DEFENCE       OF       COSMETICS 

exercise  soever  of  the  limbs,  spoil  the  pretty 
procedure  of  her  reason.  Let  her  be  content 
to  remain  the  guide,  the  subtle  suggester  of 
what  we  must  do,  the  strategist  whose  soldiers 
we  are,  the  little  architect  whose  workmen. 

"After  all,"  as  a  pretty  girl  once  said  to  me, 
"women  are  a  sex  by  themselves,  so  to  speak," 
and  the  sharper  the  line  between  their  worldly 
functions  and  ours,  the  better.  This  greater 
swiftness  and  less  erring  subtlety  of  mind, 
their  forte  and  privilege,  justifies  the  painted 
mask  that  Artifice  bids  them  wear.  Behind 
it  their  minds  can  play  without  let.  They 
gain  the  strength  of  reserve.  They  become 
important,  as  in  the  days  of  the  Roman 
Empire  were  the  Emperor's  mistresses,  as  was 
the  Pompadour  at  Versailles,  as  was  our  Eliza- 
beth. Yet  do  not  their  faces  become  lined 
with  thought;  beautiful  and  without  meaning 
are  their  faces. 

And,  truly,  of  all  the  good  things  that  will 
happen  with  the  full  revival  of  cosmetics,  one 
of  the  best  is  that  surface  will  finally  be 
severed  from  soul.  That  damnable  con- 
fusion will  be  solved  by  the  extinguishing  of 
a  prejudice  which,  as  I  suggest,  itself  created. 


A       DEFENCE       OF       COSMETICS 

Too  long  has  the  face  been  degraded  from  its 
rank  as  a  thing  of  beauty  to  a  mere  vulgar 
index  of  character  or  emotion.  We  had  come 
to  troubling  ourselves,  not  with  its  charm  of 
colour  and  line,  but  with  such  questions  as 
whether  the  lips  were  sensuous,  the  eyes  full 
of  sadness,  the  nose  indicative  of  determina- 
tion. I  have  no  quarrel  with  physiognomy. 
For  my  own  part  I  believe  in  it.  But  it  has 
tended  to  degrade  the  face  aesthetically,  in 
such  wise  as  the  study  of  cheirosophy  has 
tended  to  degrade  the  hand.  And  the  use 
of  cosmetics,  the  masking  of  the  face,  will 
change  this.  We  shall  gaze  at  a  woman 
merely  because  she  is  beautiful,  not  stare  into 
her  face  anxiously,  as  into  the  face  of  a  bar- 
ometer. 

How  fatal  it  has  been,  in  how  many  ways, 
this  confusion  of  soul  and  service!  Wise 
were  the  Greeks  in  making  plain  masks  for 
their  mummers  to  play  in,  and  dunces  we  not 
to  have  done  the  same!  Only  the  other  day, 
an  actress  was  saying  that  what  she  was 
most  proud  of  in  her  art — next,  of  course,  to 
having  appeared  in  some  provincial  panto- 
mime at  the  age  of  three — was  the  deftness 


A        DEFENCE        OF        COSMETICS 

with  which  she  contrived,  in  parts  demanding 
a  rapid  succession  of  emotions,  to  dab  her 
cheeks  quite  quickly  with  rouge  from  the 
palm  of  her  right  hand  or  powder  from  the 
palm  of  her  left.  Gracious  goodness!  why 
do  not  we  have  masks  upon  the  stage? 
Drama  is  the  presentment  of  the  soul  in 
action.  The  mirror  of  the  soul  is  the  voice. 
Let  the  young  critics,  who  seek  a  cheap  rep- 
utation for  austerity,  by  cavilling  at  "inciden- 
tal music,"  set  their  faces  rather  against  the 
attempt  to  justify  inferior  dramatic  art  by 
the  subvention  of  a  quite  alien  art  like  paint- 
ing, of  any  art,  indeed,  whose  sphere  is  only 
surface.  Let  those,  again,  who  sneer,  so 
rightly,  at  the  "painted  anecdotes  of  the  Aca- 
demy," censure  equally  the  writers  who  tres- 
pass on  painters'  ground.  It  is  a  proclaimed 
sin  that  a  painter  should  concern  himself  with 
a  good  little  girl's  affection  for  a  Scotch  grey- 
hound, or  the  keen  enjoyment  of  their  port 
by  elderly  gentlemen  of  the  early  'forties. 
Yet,  for  a  painter  to  prod  the  soul  with  his 
paint-brush  is  no  worse  than  for  a  novelist 
to  refuse  to  dip  under  the  surface,  and  the 
fashion  of  avoiding,   a  psychological  study 


A       DEFENCE       OF       COSMETICS 

of  grief  by  stating  that  the  owner's  hair 
turned  white  in  a  single  night,  or  of  shame 
by  mentioning  a  sudden  rush  of  scarlet  to 
the  cheeks,  is  as  lamentable  as  may  be.  But! 
But  with  the  universal  use  of  cosmetics  and 
the  consequent  secernment  of  soul  and  sur- 
face, upon  which,  at  the  risk  of  irritating 
a  reader,  I  must  again  insist,  all  those  old 
properties  that  went  to  bolster  up  the  ordinary 
novel — the  trembling  lips,  the  flashing  eyes, 
the  determined  curve  of  the  chin,  the  nervous 
trick  of  biting  the  moustache,  aye,  and  the 
hectic  spot  of  red  on  either  cheek — will  be 
made  spiflicate,  as  the  puppets  were  spifli- 
cated  by  Don  Quixote.  Yes,  even  now 
Demos  begins  to  discern.  The  same  spirit 
that  has  revived  rouge,  smote  his  mouth  as  it 
grinned  at  the  wondrous  painter  of  mist  and 
river,  and  now  sends  him  sprawling  for  the 
pearls  that  Meredith  dived  for  in  the  deep 
waters  of  romance. 

Indeed  the  revival  of  cosmetics  must  needs 
be  so  splendid  an  influence,  conjuring  booms 
innumerable,  that  one  inclines  almost  to 
mutter  against  that  inexorable  law  by  which 
Artifice  must  perish  from  time  to  time.  That 
-C13> 


A       DEFENCE       OF       COSMETICS 

such  branches  of  painting  as  the  staining  of 
glass  or  the  illuminating  of  manuscripts 
should  fall  into  disuse  seems,  in  comparison, 
so  likely;  these  were  esoteric  arts;  they  died 
with  the  monastic  spirit.  But  personal  ap- 
pearance is  art's  very  basis.  The  painting  of 
the  face  is  the  first  kind  of  painting  men  can 
have  known.  To  make  beautiful  things — is 
it  not  an  impulse  laid  upon  few?  But  to 
make  oneself  beautiful  is  an  universal  in- 
stinct. Strange  that  the  resultant  art  could 
ever  perish!  So  fascinating  an  art  too!  So 
various  in  its  materials  from  stimmis,  psimy- 
thium,  and  fuligo  to  bismuth  and  arsenic, 
so  simple  in  that  its  ground  and  its  subject- 
matter  are  one,  so  marvellous  in  that  its  very 
subject-matter  becomes  lovely  when  an  artist 
has  selected  it!  For  surely  this  is  no  idle 
nor  fantastic  saying.  To  deny  that  "making 
up"  is  an  art,  on  the  pretext  that  the  finished 
work  of  its  exponents  depends  for  beauty  and 
excellence  upon  the  ground  chosen  for  the 
work,  is  absurd.  At  the  touch  of  a  true 
artist,  the  plainest  face  turns  comely.  As 
subject-matter  the  face  is  no  more  than  sug- 
gestive, as  ground,  merely  a  loom  round  which 


A       DEFENCE       OF       COSMETICS 

the  beatus  artifex  may  spin  the  threads  of 
any  golden  fabric: 

"Quae  nunc  nomen  habent  operosi  signa  Maronis 
Pondus  iners  quondam  duraque  massa  juit. 
Multa  viros  nescire  decet;  pars  maxima  rerum 
Ojfendat,  si  non  interiora  tegas," 

and,  as  Ovid  would  seem  to  suggest,  by  pig- 
ments any  tone  may  be  set  aglow  on  a  woman's 
cheek,  from  enamel  the  features  take  any 
form.  Insomuch  that  surely  the  advocates 
of  soup-kitchens  and  free-libraries  and  other 
devices  for  giving  people  what  Providence 
did  not  mean  them  to  receive  should  send 
out  pamphlets  in  the  praise  of  self-embel- 
lishment. For  it  will  place  Beauty  within 
easy  reach  of  many  who  could  not  otherwise 
hope  to  attain  to  it. 

But  of  course  Artifice  is  rather  exacting. 
In  return  for  the  repose  she  forces — so  wisely! 
— upon  her  followers  when  the  sun  is  high 
or  the  moon  is  blown  across  heaven,  she  de- 
mands that  they  should  pay  her  long  hom- 
age at  the  sun's  rising.  The  initiate  may 
not  enter  lightly  upon  her  mysteries.  For, 
if  a  bad  complexion  be  inexcusable,  to  be  ill- 


A       DEFENCE       OF       COSMETICS 

painted  is  unforgivable;  and,  when  the  toilet 
is  laden  once  more  with  the  fulness  of  its 
elaboration,  we  shall  hear  no  more  of  the 
proper  occupations  for  women.  And  think, 
how  sweet  an  energy,  to  sit  at  the  mirror  of 
coquetry!  See  the  dear  merits  of  the  toilet 
as  shown  upon  old  vases,  or  upon  the  walls 
of  Roman  ruins,  or,  rather  still,  read  Bottiger's 
alluring,  scholarly  description  of  "Morgens- 
cenen  in  Puttzimmer  Einer  Reichen  Romerin." 
Read  of  Sabina's  face  as  she  comes  through 
the  curtain  of  her  bed-chamber  to  the  chamber 
of  her  toilet.  The  slave-girls  have  long  been 
chafing  their  white  feet  upon  the  marble 
floor.  They  stand,  those  timid  Greek  girls, 
marshalled  in  little  battalions.  Each  has  her 
appointed  task,  and  all  kneel  in  welcome  as 
Sabina  stalks,  ugly  and  frowning,  to  the  toilet 
chair.  Scaphion  steps  forth  from  among 
them,  and,  dipping  a  tiny  sponge  in  a  bowl 
of  hot  milk,  passes  it  lightly,  ever  so  lightly, 
over  her  mistress'  face.  The  Poppaean  pastes 
melt  beneath  it  like  snow.  A  cooling  lotion 
is  poured  over  her  brow,  and  is  fanned  with 
feathers.  Phiale  comes  after,  a  clever  girl, 
captured  in  some  sea-skirmish  on  the  .ZEgean. 


A       DEFENCE       OF       COSMETICS 

In  her  left  hand  she  holds  the  ivory  box 
wherein  are  the  phucus  and  that  white  powder, 
psimythium ;  in  her  right  a  sheaf  of  slim 
brushes.  With  how  sure  a  touch  does  she 
mingle  the  colours,  and  in  what  sweet  pro- 
portion blushes  and  blanches  her  lady's  up- 
turned face.  Phiale  is  the  cleverest  of  all 
the  slaves.  Now  Calamis  dips  her  quill  in 
a  certain  powder  that  floats,  liquid  and  sable, 
in  the  hollow  of  her  palm.  Standing  upon 
tip-toe  and  with  lips  parted,  she  traces  the 
arch  of  the  eyebrows.  The  slaves  whisper 
loudly  of  their  lady's  beauty,  and  two  of  them 
hold  up  a  mirror  to  her.  Yes,  the  eyebrows 
are  rightly  arched.  But  why  does  Psecas 
abase  herself?  She  is  craving  leave  to 
powder  Sabina's  hair  with  a  fine  new  powder. 
It  is  made  of  the  grated  rind  of  the  cedar- 
tree,  and  a  Gallic  perfumer,  whose  stall  is 
near  the  Circus,  gave  it  to  her  for  a  kiss.  No 
lady  in  Rome  knows  of  it.  And  so,  when 
four  special  slaves  have  piled  up  the  head- 
dress, out  of  a  perforated  box  this  glistening 
powder  is  showered.  Into  every  little  brown 
ringlet  it  enters,  till  Sabina's  hair  seems  like 
a  pile  of  gold  coins.  Lest  the  breezes  send 
-C17> 


A       DEFENCE       OF       COSMETICS 

it  flying,  the  girls  lay  the  powder  with 
sprinkled  attar.  Soon  Sabina  will  start  for 
the  Temple  of  Cybele. 

Ah!  Such  are  the  lures  of  the  toilet  that 
none  will  for  long  hold  aloof  from  them. 
Cosmetics  are  not  going  to  be  a  mere  prosaic 
remedy  for  age  or  plainness,  but  all  ladies 
and  all  young  girls  will  come  to  love  them. 
Does  not  a  certain  blithe  Marquise,  whose 
lettres  intimes  from  the  Court  of  Louis  Seize 
are  less  read  than  their  wit  deserves,  tell  us 
how  she  was  scandalised  to  see  "meme  les 
toutes  jeunes  demoiselles  emaillees  comme  ma 
tabatiere"  ?  So  it  shall  be  with  us.  Surely 
the  common  prejudice  against  painting  the 
lily  can  but  be  based  on  mere  ground  of 
economy.  That  which  is  already  fair  is  com- 
plete, it  may  be  urged — urged  implausibly, 
for  there  are  not  so  many  lovely  things  in 
this  world  that  we  can  afford  not  to  know 
each  one  of  them  by  heart.  There  is  only 
one  white  lily,  and  who  that  has  ever  seen 
— as  I  have — a  lily  really  well  painted  could 
grudge  the  artist  so  fair  a  ground  for  his 
skill?  Scarcely  do  you  believe  through  how 
many   nice    metamorphoses    a    lily    may   be 


A       DEFENCE       OF       COSMETICS 

passed  by  him.     In  like  manner,  we  all  know 
the  young  girl,  with  her  simpleness,  her  good- 
ness, her  wayward  ignorance.     And   a  very 
charming  ideal  for  England  must  she  have 
been,  and  a  very  natural  one,  when  a  young 
girl  sat  even  on  the  throne.     But  no  nation 
can  keep  its  ideal  for  ever,   and  it  needed 
none    of    Mr.    Gilbert's    delicate    satire    in 
"Utopia"  to  remind  us  that  she  had  passed 
out  of  our  ken  with  the   rest  of  the  early 
Victorian    era.     What    writer    of    plays,    as 
lately  asked  some  pressman,  who  had  been 
told  off  to  attend  many  first  nights  and  knew 
what  he  was  talking  about,  ever  dreams  of 
making    the    young    girl    the    centre    of    his 
theme?     Rather  he  seeks  inspiration  from  the 
tried  and  tired  woman  of  the  world,  in  all 
her    intricate    maturity,    whilst,    by    way    of 
comic  relief,  he  sends  the  young  girl  flitting 
in    and    out   with   a   tennis-racket,   the   poor 
tiSwXov    dfmvpov    of    her    former    self.     The 
season   of   the   unsophisticated   is   gone   by, 
and  the  young  girl's  final  extinction  beneath 
the  rising  tides  of  cosmetics   will  leave  no 
gap  in  life  and  will  rob  art  of  nothing. 
"Tush,"  I  can  hear  some  damned  flutter- 
<19> 


A       DEFENCE       OF       COSMETICS 

pate  exclaim,  "girlishness  and  innocence  are 
as  strong  and  as  permanent  as  womanhood 
itself!  Why,  a  few  months  past,  the  whole 
town  went  mad  over  Miss  Cissie  Loftus!  Was 
not  hers  a  success  of  girlish  innocence  and 
the  absence  of  rouge?  If  such  things  as  these 
be  outmoded,  why  was  she  so  wildly  popular?" 
Indeed,  the  triumph  of  that  clever  girl,  whose 
debut  made  London  nice  even  in  August,  is 
but  another  witness  to  the  truth  of  my  con- 
tention. In  a  very  sophisticated  time,  sim- 
plicity has  a  new  dulcedo.  Hers  was  a  success 
of  contrast.  Accustomed  to  clever  malaperts 
like  Miss  Lloyd  or  Miss  Reeve,  whose  ex- 
perienced pouts  and  smiles  under  the  sun- 
bonnet  are  a  standing  burlesque  of  innocence 
and  girlishness,  Demos  was  really  delighted, 
for  once  and  away,  to  see  the  real  present- 
ment of  these  things  upon  his  stage.  Com- 
ing after  all  those  sly  serios,  coming  so  young 
and  mere  with  her  pink  frock  and  straightly 
combed  hair,  Miss  Cissie  Loftus  had  the  charm 
which  things  of  another  period  often  do  pos- 
sess. Besides,  just  as  we  adored  her  for 
the  abrupt  nod  with  which  she  was  wont  at 

first  to  acknowledge  the  applause,  so  we  were 

-C20> 


A       DEFENCE       OF       COSMETICS 

glad  for  her  to  come  upon  the  stage  with 
nothing  to  tinge  the  ivory  of  her  cheeks.  It 
seemed  so  strange,  that  neglect  of  convention. 
To  be  behind  footlights  and  not  rouged!  Yes, 
hers  was  a  success  of  contrast.  She  was  like 
a  daisy  in  the  window  of  Solomons'.  She 
was  delightful.  And  yet,  such  is  the  force 
of  convention,  that  when  last  I  saw  her,  play- 
ing in  some  burlesque  at  the  Gaiety,  her 
fringe  was  curled  and  her  pretty  face  rouged 
with  the  best  of  them.  And,  if  further  need 
be  to  show  the  absurdity  of  having  called 
her  performance  "a  triumph  of  naturalness 
over  the  jaded  spirit  of  modernity,"  let  us 
reflect  that  the  little  mimic  was  not  a  real 
old-fashioned  girl  after  all.  She  had  none 
of  that  restless  naturalness  that  would  seem 
to  have  characterised  the  girl  of  the  early 
Victorian  days.  She  had  no  pretty  ways — 
no  smiles  nor  blushes  nor  tremors.  Possibly 
Demos  could  not  have  stood  a  presentment  of 
girlishness  unrestrained. 

But,  with  her  grave  insouciance,  Miss  Cissie 

Loftus  had  much  of  the  reserve  that  is  one 

of  the   factors   of  feminine  perfection,  and 

to  most  comes  only,  as  I  have  said,  with  arti- 

<21> 


A       DEFENCE       OF       COSMETICS 

fice.  Her  features  played  very,  very  slightly. 
And  in  truth,  this  may  have  been  one  of  the 
reasons  of  her  great  success.  For  expression 
is  but  too  often  the  ruin  of  a  face;  and, 
since  we  cannot,  as  yet,  so  order  the  circum- 
stances of  life  that  women  shall  never  be 
betrayed  into  "an  unbecoming  emotion,"  when 
the  brunette  shall  never  have  cause  to  blush 
nor  La  Gioconda  to  frown,  the  safest  way 
by  far  is  to  create,  by  brush  and  pigments, 
artificial  expression  for  every  face. 

And  this — say  you? — will  make  monot- 
ony? You  are  mistaken,  toto  ccelo  mis- 
taken. When  your  mistress  has  wearied  you 
with  one  expression,  then  it  will  need  but 
a  few  touches  of  that  pencil,  a  backward 
sweep  of  that  brush,  and  lo,  you  will  be 
revelling  in  another.  For  though,  of  course, 
the  painting  of  the  face  is,  in  manner,  most 
like  the  painting  of  canvas,  in  outcome  it  is 
rather  akin  to  the  art  of  music — lasting,  like 
music's  echo,  not  for  very  long.  So  that,  no 
doubt,  of  the  many  ,little  appurtenances 
of  the  Reformed  Toilet  Table,  not  the 
least  vital  will  be  a  list  of  the  emotions 
that    become    its    owner,    with    recipes    for 


A        DEFENCE        OF        COSMETICS 

simulating  them.  According  to  the  col- 
our she  wills  her  hair  to  be  for  the 
time — black  or  yellow  or,  peradventure, 
burnished  red — she  will  blush  for  you, 
sneer  for  you,  laugh  or  languish  for  you. 
The  good  combinations  of  line  and  colour  are 
nearly  numberless,  and  by  their  means  poor 
restless  woman  will  be  able  to  realise  her 
moods  in  all  their  shades  and  lights  and 
dappledoms,  to  live  many  lives  and  mas- 
querade through  many  moments  of  joy.  No 
monotony  will  be.  And  for  us  men  matri- 
mony will  have  lost  its  sting. 

But  that  in  the  world  of  women  they  will 
not  neglect  this  art,  so  ripping  in  iself,  in 
its  result  so  wonderfully  beneficent,  I  am 
sure  indeed.  Much,  I  have  said,  is  already 
done  for  its  full  revival.  The  spirit  of  the 
age  has  made  straight  the  path  of  its  pro- 
fessors. Fashion  has  made  Jezebel  surrender 
her  monopoly  of  the  rouge-pot.  As  yet,  the 
great  art  of  self-embellishment  is  for  us  but 
in  its  infancy.  But  if  Englishwomen  can 
bring  it  to  the  flower  of  an  excellence  «o 
supreme  as  never  yet  has  it  known,  then, 
though  Old  England  lose  her  martial  and  com- 
<23y 


A        DEFENCE        OF        COSMETICS 

merical  supremacy,  we  patriots  will  have  the 
satisfaction  of  knowing  that  she  has  been  ad- 
vanced at  one  bound  to  a  place  in  the  councils 
of  aesthetic  Europe.  And,  in  sooth,  is  this 
hoping  too  high  of  my  countrywomen?  True 
that,  as  the  arl  Beema  always  to  have  appealed 
to  the  ladies  of  Athens,  and  it  was  not  until  the 
waning  time  of  the  Republic  that  Roman 
ladies  learned  to  love  the  practice  of  it,  so 
Paris,  Athenian  in  this  as  in  all  other  things, 
has  been  noted  hitherto  as  a  far  more  vivid 
centre  of  the  art  than  London.  But  it  was 
in  Rome,  under  the  Emperors,  that  unguen- 
taria  reached  it-  zenith,  and  -hall  it  not  be 
in  London,  BOOn,  that  unguentaiia  shall 
outstrip  it-  Roman  perfection!  Surely  there 
must  be  among  us  artists  as  cunning  in 
the  use  of  brush  and  pufT  as  any  who  lived 
at  Versailles.  Surely  the  splendid,  inpal- 
pable  advance  of  good  taste,  as  shown  in  dress 
and  in  the  decoration  of  houses,  may  justify 
my  hope  of  die  preeminence  of  Englishwomen 
in  the  cosmetic  art.  By  their  innate  delicacy 
of  touch  they  will  accomplish  much,  and  much, 
of  course,  by  their  swift  feminine  perception. 
Vet  it  were  well  that  they  should  know  some- 


A       DEFENCE       OF       COSMETICS 

thing  also  of  the  theoretical  side  of  the  craft. 
Modern  authorities  upon  the  mysteries  of  the 
toilet  are,  it  is  true,  rather  few;  but  among 
the  ancients  many  a  writer  would  seem  to 
have  been  fascinated  by  them.  Archigenes, 
a  man  of  science  at  the  Court  of  Cleopatra, 
and  Criton  at  the  Court  of  the  Emperor  Trajan, 
both  wrote  treatises  upon  cosmetics — doubt- 
less most  scholarly  treatises  that  would  have 
given  many  a  precious  hint.  It  is  a  pity  they 
are  not  extant.  From  Lucian  or  from 
I  Juvenal,  with  his  bitter  picture  of  a  Roman 
levee,  much  may  be  learnt;  from  the  staid 
pages  of  Xenophon  and  Aristophanes'  dear 
farces.  But  best  of  all  is  that  fine  book  of 
the  Ars  Amatoria  that  Ovid  has  set  aside 
for  the  consideration  of  dyes,  perfumes,  and 
pomades.  Written  by  an  artist  who  knew  the 
allurement  of  the  toilet  and  understood  its 
philosophy,  it  remains  without  rival  as  a 
treatise  upon  Artifice.  It  is  more  than  a4 "... 
poem,  it  is  a  manual;  and  if  there  be  left 
in  England  any  lady  who  cannot  read  Latin 
in  the  original,  she  will  do  well  to  proem e 
a  discreet  translation.  In  the  Dodleian 
Library  there   is  treasured  the  only  known 


A       DEFENCE       OF       COSMETICS 

copy  of  a  very  poignant  and  delightful  render- 
ing of  this  one  book  of  Ovid's  masterpiece. 
It  was  made  by  a  certain  Wye  Waltonstall,  who 
lived  in  the  days  of  Elizabeth,  and,  seeing 
that  he  dedicated  it  to  "the  Vertuous  Ladyes 
and  Gentlewomen  of  Great  Britain,"  I  am  sure 
that  the  gallant  writer,  could  he  know  of  our 
great  renaissance  of  cosmetics,  would  wish 
his  little  work  to  be  placed  once  more  within 
their  reach.  "Inasmuch  as  to  you,  ladyes 
and  gentlewomen,"  so  he  writes  in  his  queer 
little  dedication,  "my  booke  of  pigments  doth 
firft  addreffe  itfelf,  that  it  may  kiffe  your 
hands  and  afterwards  have  the  lines  thereof 
in  reading  sweetened  by  the  odour  of  your 
breath,  while  the  dead  letters  formed  into 
words  by  your  divided  lips  may  receive  new 
life  by  your  paffionate  expreffion,  and  the 
words  marryed  in  that  Ruby  coloured  temple 
may  thus  happily  united,  multiply  your  con- 
tentment." It  is  rather  sad  to  think  that,  at 
this  crisis  in  the  history  of  pigments,  the 
Vertuous  Ladyes  and  Gentlewomen  cannot 
read  the  libellus  of  Wye  Waltonstall,  who  did 
so  dearly  love  pigments. 

But  since  the  days  when  these  great  critics 
-C26> 


A       DEFENCE       OF       COSMETICS 

wrote  their  treatises,  with  what  gifts  innum- 
erable has  Artifice  been  loaded  by  Science! 
Many  little  partitions  must  be  added  to  the 
narthecium  before  it  can  comprehend  all  the 
new  cosmetics  that  have  been  quietly  devised 
since  classical  days,  and  will  make  the  modern 
toilet  chalks  away  more  splendid  in  its 
possibilities.  A  pity  that  no  one  has  devoted 
himself  to  the  compiling  of  a  new  list;  but 
doubtless  all  the  newest  devices  are  known 
to  the  admirable  unguentarians  of  Bond 
Street,  who  will  impart  them  to  their  clients. 
Our  thanks,  too,  should  be  given  to  Science 
for  ridding  us  of  the  old  danger  that  was 
latent  in  the  use  of  cosmetics.  Nowadays 
they  cannot,  being  purged  of  any  poisonous 
element,  do  harm  to  the  skin  that  they  make 
beautiful.  There  need  be  no  more  sowing 
the  seeds  of  destruction  in  the  furrows  of 
time,  no  martyrs  to  the  cause  like  Maria, 
Countess  of  Coventry,  that  fair  dame  but  in- 
felix,  who  died,  so  they  relate,  from  the  effect 
of  a  poisonous  rouge  upon  her  lips.  No,  we 
need  have  no  fears  now.  Artifice  will  claim 
not  another  victim  from  among  her  wor- 
shippers. 


A       DEFENCE       OF       COSMETICS 

Loveliness  shall  sit  at  the  toilet,  watching 
her  oval  face  in  the  oval  mirror.  Her  smooth 
fingers  shall  flit  among  the  paints  and  powder, 
to  tip  and  mingle  them,  catch  up  a  pencil, 
clasp  a  phial,  and  what  not  and  what  not, 
until  the  mask  of  vermeil  tinct  has  been  laid 
aptly,  the  enamel  quite  hardened.  And, 
heavens,  how  she  will  charm  us  and  ensorcel 
our  eyes!  Positively  rouge  will  rob  us  for 
a  time  of  all  our  reason;  we  shall  go  mad 
over  masks.  Was  it  not  at  Capua  that  they 
had  a  whole  street  where  nothing  was  sold 
but  dyes  and  unguents?  We  must  have  such 
a  street,  and,  to  fill  our  new  Seplasia,  our 
Arcade  of  the  Unguents,  all  herbs  and  minerals 
and  live  creatures  shall  give  of  their  substance. 
The  white  cliffs  of  Albion  shall  be  ground 
to  powder  for  Loveliness,  and  perfumed  by 
the  ghosts  of  many  a  little  violet.  The  fluffy 
eider-ducks,  that  are  swimming  round  the 
pond,  shall  lose  their  feathers,  that  the 
powder-puff  may  be  moonlike  as  it  passes 
over  Loveliness'  lovely  face.  Even  the 
camels  shall  become  ministers  of  delight, 
giving  many  tufts  of  their  hair  to  be  stained 
in  her  splendid  colour-box,  and  across  her 
-C28> 


A       DEFENCE       OF       COSMETICS 

cheek  the  swift  hare's  foot  shall  fly  as 
of  old.  The  sea  shall  offer  her  the  phuchus, 
its  scarlet  weed.  We  shall  spill  the  blood 
of  mulberries  at  her  bidding.  And,  as 
in  another  period  of  great  ecstasy,  a 
dancing  wanton,  le  belle  Aubrey,  was 
crowned  upon  a  church's  lighted  altar,  so 
Arsenic,  that  "greentress'd  goddess,"  ashamed 
at  length  of  skulking  between  the  soup  of  the 
unpopular  and  the  test-tubes  of  the  Queen's 
analyst,  shall  be  exalted  to  a  place  of  con- 
summate honour  upon  the  toilet-table  of 
Loveliness. 

All  these  things  shall  come  to  pass.  Times 
of  jolliness  and  glad  indulgence!  For  Arti- 
fice, whom  we  drove  forth,  has  returned  among 
us,  and,  though  her  eyes  are  red  with  crying, 
she  is  smiling  forgiveness.  She  is  kind.  Let 
us  dance  and  be  glad,  and  trip  the  cocka- 
whoop!  Artifice,  sweetest  exile,  is  come  into 
her  kingdom.     Let  us  dance  her  a  welcome! 

Oxford,  1894. 

THE   END 


-C29> 


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